"...Bartlebooth resolved one day that his whole life would be organised around a single project, an arbitrarily constrained programme with no purpose outside its own completion"
"...the plan should not have to do with an exploit or record, it would be neither a peak to scale nor an ocean floor to reach. What Bartlebooth would do would not be heroic, or spectacular; it would be something simple and discreet, difficult of course but not impossibly so, controlled from start to finish and converselly controlling every detail of the life of the man engaged upon it"
Georges Perec, Life a user's manual. Vintage Classics pages 117,118.
45º25’ NORTH PARALLEL
45º25’ NORTH PARALLEL is a project we are doing,
consisting of going around the world and placing a metallic plate up to every 100 km or less on this
terrestrial parallel. It goes through France, Italy, Croatia, Serbia, Rumania,
Ukrania, Russia, Kazajstan, Uzbekistan, China, Mongolia, Japan, the US and
Canada.
45º25’
NORTH PARALLEL is:
- a
radical idea of drawing
- an
adventure
- a mission
of geographical exploration
- a
discipline
-
a line where Art and
Life get together
So far we’ve hung and documented 81 plates along
the US and Canada, 40 between France and the Strait of Kerch in Ucrania, 17
between the Azov and the Caspian Seas, 7 between the Caspian and
the Aral Seas in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, 25 between the Aral Sea and the kazakh border with China and 28 in Mongolia (Gobi-Altaï).
Why 45º25’ N Parallel?
This parallel goes accross the city of
Venice, which we associate to the ideas of adventure, beginning and ending of a
Great Journey (Silk Road, Marco Polo’s route, honeymoons,…), fragility, excess,
beauty. It is, at the same time, the Biennale’s venue, event where territory
limits of Art have been traditionally posted every two years.
Our activity:
PLATES
We nail metallic plates (every less than 100 km measured linearly on the map) where it can be read “45º25’ N PARALLEL”. The plates are made of aluminium with black letters on a yellow reflective background.
We nail metallic plates (every less than 100 km measured linearly on the map) where it can be read “45º25’ N PARALLEL”. The plates are made of aluminium with black letters on a yellow reflective background.
Each plate is documented by:
- A picture taken from the GPS beside the plate
- Multiple photographs for a later edition of a panoramic 360º view of the plate and what surrounds it
- A video consisting of
a slow panoramic 360º view starting from the plate. The image is registered as
well as the environmental sound (birds, insects, cars, motors, wind)
- A front view of the
plate installed in the landscape - A picture taken from the GPS beside the plate
- Multiple photographs for a later edition of a panoramic 360º view of the plate and what surrounds it
PHOTOGRAPHS
We take pictures of roads, people, animals, landscapes,
objects,...
That’s a very important part of the project. Searching
for photographs is a way of travelling and watching and it allows us a more profound
approach into the Parallel.
When did we start?:
We started thinking of the project 45º25’ North
Parallel on 2005. On 2006 we started putting plates in the US and Canada, a
journey that we repeated and completed two years later. On 2007 we showed for
the first time a part of the 45º25' North Parallel: “Idea of north: EEUU and Canada”.
